So, yeah. Lettuce. Who needs it?
For the past month or so I haven't... much, anyway.
My daily salads have overflowed my bowl, made largely with foraged greens. The salad pictured here does have a little lettuce in it, but on many days, I've used none.
The forage has included lambs quarters (lots), cleavers, chickweed, dandelion leaves, radicchio sprouting back from last fall's planting, violet leaves (young) and flowers, bronze fennel, second-year parsley, chives and/or garlic chives (especially chive flowers popping open now), sometimes herb leaves like monarda, mint and lemon balm, and even a little henbit. I've noticed some wood sorrel/sour grass/oxalis, so I'll start including that, too. Plus this has carrots (not homegrown... yet), freshly picked asparagus, arugula microgreens, apple, nuts of some kind, and I don't remember what else.
These salads not only are tastier than store-bought lettuce, but far more nutritious. However, the season is getting late. The cleavers already is too mature for salads, and the chickweed won't last much into the heat. The herbs will hang around and be available all summer, though.
Never fear, the earliest planted lettuce has now reached a nice size, so I'll include some of that in future salads. Also, the garden-grown arugula is ready to pick.
I love my salads!
